Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 17, 1919
Mother Jones News for April 1919, Part II
-Found Speaking in Peoria, Illinois
On Sunday April 6th, Mother Jones spoke at the Peoria Coliseum on behalf of Tom Mooney. She shared the stage with Duncan MacDonald and T. H. Tippett, both of whom also delivered addresses.
Sunday April 6, 1919, Peoria, IL
Mother Jones Speaks at “Mooney Day” Event
Friends, fellow workers, we are living today in the greatest age the world has ever passed through in human history. The whole world is ablaze with revolt. The uprising among the unfortunate workers is suppressed in the daily press. I took a clipping while in New York the other day, out the New York World, which said that the human race has never in human history passed through an age like this.
There was once back in Greece, a young man, two hundred years after the world’s greatest agitator was marred, crucified, hung, maligned, vilified, by the powers there. There arose in Carthage an agitation and the courts became uneasy. They sent down to Carthage in those days a force that arrested all those who were in the agitation movement which was eighteen hundred years ago. We have not changed the program very much since. We have talked a lot about Christianity, but we have never seen any Christianity yet. There has never been any Christianity on the earth and there is not going to be any for a while yet! They held them in slavery or sold them, if they did not need them, and so, they brought them into court.
Among those was a young man and the judge said to him “Who ar you?” He said, “I am a man,” a member of the human family. The judge asked, “Why do you carry on this agitation” The boy replied, “Because I belong to a class that in human history have always been crucified, robbed, murdered, jailed, maligned, vilified, starved and because I belong to that class, I feel it is my duty to awaken that class to their power and their duty.” He was sentenced, of course.
The Portland Fellow Workers send $285.75 to be equally divided among the boys in the Leavenworth Penitentiary, but the rebels confined therein decided unanimously to send same to the general office as the organization is in need of ready cash at present.
This is the spirit of the men who fought for us, and for whom we are now fighting, and their message is organize, organize some more.
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[Emphasis added.]
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Disciplinary Reports from Leavenworth Penitentiary
J. A. MacDonald, No. 13133
January 24, 1919
Became sarcastic and ridiculed the laws and system of Government of the United States. Isolation on restricted diet and removed as school teacher.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 7, 1919
Poetry from Leavenworth Prisoner No. 13104, Ralph Chaplin
From the Leavenworth New Era of April 4, 1919:
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LIBRARY NOTICE
…..A donation of ten volumes of “The Wit and Humor of America,” edited by Marshall P. Wilder, has been added to the library by Ralph Chaplin. It is a fine set of books , filled with chuckles and laughter…..
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 28, 1919
New York, New York – Defense Committee Statement on Persecution of I. W. W.
From The Ohio Socialist of March 26, 1919:
Defense Committee Tells of
Persecution of I. W. W.
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The New York Defense Committee of the I. W. W. has issued the following statement in regard to the government’s activities in persecuting that organization:
With the war-time prosecutions being pushed relentlessly by the U. S. government and with a fresh outburst of capitalist persecution everywhere […..against?] radical labor elements, the I. W. W. is being driven to redoubled efforts to raise the large sum needed to protect its members throughout the country and defend the right of the organization to carry on its work as a labor union.
The New York Defense Committee of the I. W. W. has been reorganized and has mapped out an energetic money-raising and publicity campaign. The labor organizations of New York and vicinity and radical groups and individuals throughout the country are going to be appealed to for help in meeting the financial demands of the situation.
The committee, in its appeal for the support of all friends of the radical labor movement, points to the fact that, in addition to 93 I. W. W.’s convicted in the famous Chicago trial last summer and sentenced to 807 years’ imprisonment and fined aggregating $2,570,000, 46 members were convicted last January in the Sacramento bomb frame-up. Besides there, 34 more are to be tried in Wichita this month, while 28 are still awaiting trial in Omaha and 27 in Spokane, in addition to scores of individual cases throughout the western states, either under the Espionage act or under state laws against “criminal syndicalism” enacted within the past year for the express purpose of crushing the I. W. W.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 18, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Fellow Worker Ralph Chaplin Pens a Sonnet
From The New Appeal of February 15, 1919:
A Rebel in Jail
Fellow Worker Ralph Chaplin, Prisoner #13104
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[Note by Upton Sinclair]
Recently I was addressing the ladies of one of the large clubs in Los Angeles, and they were much amused when I told them that whenever I was in jail I found myself irresistibly impelled to write poetry. Moreover, that was my one chance to get poetry published; newspapers were ready to give it space, because it had been written in jail! You will note from the following letter that others also make verses in captivity. You see, there is nothing else you can do; and you have an irresistible impulse to tell the people outside what is happening to you!
Wherever you live in America you will read in your daily paper about those desperate criminals called I. W. W.s, who want to destroy society, but whom a wise government has put behind bars where they cannot do harm.
From this letter you may see exactly what desperadoes they are. They write sonnets, and beg you to send them good literature to read!
Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 27, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Fellow Workers Arrive from Sacramento
From The Leavenworth Times of January 26, 1919:
MORE I. W. W. PRISONERS HERE
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Special Car Load of Them Brought in
From California Yesterday
-Names and Sentences.
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Silent Defenders
Another big batch of I. W. W. prisoners was landed in the Federal penitentiary yesterday. They were brought in from California in a special car in charge of six deputy United States marshals. They got into the prison at 3:30 in the afternoon.
These were all white men and they were a tough looking bunch. There were sharp and well dressed looking prisoners in the ninety-one that were brought over from Chicago with Haywood last fall, but the California gang seems to be run down hobos.
They will be dressed in Monday and put to work Tuesday. Like the other I. W. W. prisoners they will be divided up among the working gangs of the penitentiary.
While there is a soul in prison
I am not free.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 9, 1919
America’s Political Prisoners by Floyd Dell
From The Liberator of January 1919:
“What Are You Doing Out There?”
[by Floyd Dell]
THIS magazine goes to two classes of readers: those who are in jail, and those who are out. This particular article is intended for the latter class. It is intended for those who wish to prove themselves friends of American freedom rather than those who have had it proved against them.
The relation between these two classes of people is embarrassingly like that in the old anecdote about Emerson and Thoreau. Thoreau refused to obey some law which he considered unjust, and was sent to jail. Emerson went to visit him. “What are you doing in here, Henry?” asked Emerson.
“What are you doing out there?” returned Thoreau grimly.
That is what the people who have gone to prison for the ideas in which we believe seem to be asking us now.
And the only self-respecting answer which we can give to this grim, silent challenge, is this: “We are working to get you out!”
That is our excuse, and we must see that it is a true one. We are voices to speak up for those whose voice has been silenced.
There are some silences that are more eloquent than speech. The newspapers were forbidden to print what ‘Gene Debs said in court; but his silence echoes around the earth in the heart of workingmen. They know what he was not allowed to tell them; and they feel that it is true.
It would be wrong to think of this as an opportunity to do something for Debs; it is rather our opportunity to make ourselves worthy of what he has done for us.
The bandage will remain on
the eyes of Justice
as long as the Capitalist
has the cut, shuffle, and deal.
-Big Bill Haywood
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday September 12, 1918
Leavenworth, Kansas – Fellow Workers Lectured by Warden
From The Leavenworth Times of September 8, 1918:
I.W.W.’S ENTER FEDERAL PEN
WITH AIR OF UNCONCERN
[Part II]
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ADVICE FROM THE WARDEN.
From the train the prisoners were marched to the chapel to listen to a short talk by Warden Morgan. As is customary when a group of men enter the institution, he explained to them what they should do and advised each one to obey without question every rule. “The prominence of your trial will cause prejudice neither for nor against you” the warden stated. “As with every other man you will be classed as a first grade prisoner on your entrance; how long you hold that classification depends on each one individually. Though you were tried and convicted jointly you will be dealt with individually while here.
“Be exceedingly slow to take advice if it necessitates any deviation from the prison rules. There are ‘old timers’ here who will probably try to get you into trouble that they themselves would avoid. Your treatment here depends largely on yourselves; play fair with us and you will receive leniency in return.”
Next the men were told to take everything from their pockets and put it in their hats. They were warned not to hold back a single bit of personal property. Knives, money, pencils, booklets, glasses and everything they possessed was turned over into the care of prison officials. After undergoing a search they were given something to eat, taken to a group of empty cells and locked up for the night.
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